from Hacker News

Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults

by bayonetz on 2/21/20, 7:30 AM with 106 comments

  • by MatekCopatek on 2/21/20, 9:01 AM

    I sometimes use business talk as a tool to make countering my points unattractive when having public discussions inside the company.

    For example - let's say your boss decides to introduce some mandatory meeting that everyone agrees is useless. Rather then complaining about it in normal language, I would say things like "well, one of our core values is delighting clients, which I would be able to do much more efficiently if we would iterate on our process and try to optimize the time currently used by this meeting".

    The example is intentionally simplified and the response is exaggerated, but you get the point - they are the ones encouraging you to use those phrases, which makes it more difficult for them to push back when you do it against them.

    The only real risk is a coworker bursting into laughter in the middle of such an exchange.

  • by vector_spaces on 2/21/20, 11:20 AM

    "The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.

    ...

    A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts."

    https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_poli...

  • by cosmodisk on 2/21/20, 8:27 AM

    I had a "pleasure" to work briefly for Lionbridge when they acquired the company I worked for. We used to get these company wide emails about various things. You read it,sit and then think how can someone rape the language to a such degree. It was written in English but felt like alien language. The amount of bullshit one manages to squeeze in a sentence is quite astonishing. In my opinion, the main reason behind all these buzzwords is insecurity. People think that if they'd speak plain English (insert any language here), they'd be inferior.

  • by Doches on 2/21/20, 8:35 AM

    I love Matt Levine's take on this:

    > From my time in investment banking I can easily believe that most investment banking transactions occur because investment bankers are pretending to do what investment bankers do, acting out scenes from “Liar’s Poker” until they start to seem real. I don’t know why investment banking would be different from any other industry. So sure, yeah, work is a kind of pretense.

  • by docdeek on 2/21/20, 8:06 AM

    A startup I worked for was constantly seeking to have everyone aligned on things. The original concept of having people pointed in the same direction was admirable, but it quickly became something like a capital-A ‘Aligned’ (meaning good) with the inverse capital-U ‘Unaligned’ being about the worst thing you could be. God help the person who found the word ‘Unaligned’ on their semester review...

  • by undebuggable on 2/21/20, 9:14 AM

    As we are at the word play, TIL "turgid", "shibboleth", "cloying", "hackneyed", "wheelhouse", "iconoclast".

    To native English speakers I advice to try at least once in their career an employer with English as a business language but not headquartered in any Anglosphere country, where English is a second language to the most employees - the communication dynamics in such environments is quite different and the American corporate newspeak doesn't stick.

  • by greendestiny_re on 2/21/20, 11:36 AM

    Blizzard developer interviews often involve phrases from the Dictionary of Management Jargon [1].

    Consider this excerpt from an interview [2] with Steven Chang and David Kosak done on February 6, 2020 regarding the Galakrond's Awakening expansion for Hearthstone after the players complained about the game being unbalanced:

    >In terms of the minor balance changes we’ve been doing recently, it’s something where we want to try and see where we can strike that balance where the community feels happy about it without introducing too much change so that the game feels completely different. This is a fine line to walk, and we will always be watching and listening to the community about the amount and timings of changes.

    No actual detail is given on anything, it's all empty feelgood sentences. Entire paragraphs go on like this, stating opinions and desires as outlined in the DoMJ:

    >Statements of desires – A statement that something is hoped for does not imply any action is to be taken to ensure the desired outcome. Example: I want us all to be happy with our compensation.

    1. http://dictionaryofmanagementjargon.yolasite.com/

    2. https://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/interview-with-hearthsto...

  • by mr_overalls on 2/21/20, 3:58 PM

    This kind of language usage isn't limited to fitting in socially in the business world.

    People use overly-elaborate language to appear intelligent or innovative, too. I once spent some time learning a martial art whose founder had replaced all of the standard names for movement and techniques with novel, quasi-technical-sounding ones.

    "Multiple attackers" became "plural assailants", "breathing technique" became "respiratory enhancement". "Sparring" became "fisticuffs". Etc.

    It was maddening, because he would correct students who slipped up and failed to use his terminology.

    https://www.usadojo.com/ross-performance-enhancement-system/

  • by yesbabyyes on 2/21/20, 9:18 AM

    It may not be quite the same thing, but this reminds me of Venkatesh Rao's "Posture talk" from his Gervais Principle series:

    https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/11/11/the-gervais-principle-...

  • by SimonSword on 2/21/20, 8:54 AM

    This reminded me of the section about "Clutter" in the book "On writing well":

    > Clutter is the official language used by corporations to hide their mistakes. When the Digital Equipment Corporation eliminated 3,000 jobs its statement didn’t mention layoffs; those were “involuntary methodologies.” When an Air Force missile crashed, it “impacted with the ground prematurely.”

  • by RaceWon on 2/21/20, 10:31 AM

    Is it really word play: Car Insurance is sold via a talking "cartoonesque lizard", medications that may help your dry skin (or possibly kill you--depending on your particular physiology) are also sold at times via similar talking animated creatures--or implied peer pressure... I could go on and on. So I often ask: how mature or advanced are we really? I personally, am not Impressed.

  • by czzr on 2/21/20, 9:03 AM

    All areas of practice have their own jargon, words that superficially sound similar to regular English but actually have specific insider meaning that promotes faster in-group communication (and a degree of in-group signalling) - this is true for scientists, software engineers, yoga instructors and yes, business people.

  • by granshaw on 2/21/20, 12:39 PM

    Two of the more recent ones that really grate me are “lift” (which isn’t even used consistently, eg “what is the lift (effort) on this” and “how much lift (benefit) would this give us”)... and “North Star” shudder

  • by friendlybus on 2/21/20, 8:24 AM

    Well this is a mean spirited attempt at destroying words that have meaning. Some people use them incorrectly and the nature of business moves on making them ineffective. Attacking them on multiple levels without describing when they are used in a positive sense seems unnecessary.

  • by flowerbrower on 2/21/20, 8:05 AM

  • by mysterydip on 2/21/20, 11:18 AM

    I saw this in the DoD when I was a contractor. Meetings full of buzzwords and abbreviations, some of which seemed to be tribal knowledge more than an actual thing. Things like "that solution won't work because of ABCD," and everyone nods in agreement. I had written down every abbreviation I heard to ask my supervisor later, and some he (and others) couldn't tell me what they stood for, despite being there for decades.

  • by praptak on 2/21/20, 9:04 AM

    Corporate buzzwords are also how to say things that you can weasel out of later.

  • by cormacrelf on 2/21/20, 12:59 PM

    There was a great piece on this yesterday by Molly Young. In my opinion, it was significantly better. It contained this excellent point:

    > As the leaked Slacks make clear, Korey, as well as her employees, were working under the new conditions of surveillance-state capitalism (or, from the company’s perspective, a culture of “inclusion and transparency”). One reason for the uptick in garbage language is exactly this sense of nonstop supervision. Employers can read emails and track keystrokes and monitor locations and clock the amount of time their employees spend noodling on Twitter. In an environment of constant auditing, it’s safer to use words that signify nothing and can be stretched to mean anything, just in case you’re caught and required to defend yourself.

    https://www.thecut.com/2020/02/spread-of-corporate-speak.htm...

  • by dTal on 2/23/20, 6:40 PM

    I don't have anything to contribute, apart from a link to a comic which sums it up hilariously:

    http://www.amazingsuperpowers.com/2013/03/business-men/

  • by jon-wood on 2/21/20, 8:55 AM

    I’m curious when people swapped the word reply with revert. I keep seeing people use phrases like “I’ll revert” when what they mean is “I’ll look into that and get back to you”. Particularly working in software I always have to stop myself when the initial reaction is that they’ve just said they’ll undo what I’ve requested.

  • by badrabbit on 2/21/20, 4:03 PM

    There are people that love this stuff. Mind boggling to me how people can write pages and listen to hours on end. Some jobs require you to make speeches and write pages and pages of this lawsuit unfriendly botton line oriented language. Insane.

  • by ajryan on 2/21/20, 3:09 PM

  • by therockspush on 2/21/20, 8:50 PM

    This article has a clear value-prop.

    We can table this discussion for now. Lets take it offline.

  • by Wooddar on 2/21/20, 8:31 AM

    This problem is exactly why I decided to create my Slack app Whatis! https://whatis.rocks/

  • by mclightning on 2/21/20, 2:39 PM

    Are workers not adults? I thought child labour was forbidden.